Author Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, publishes books about business, customer service, the call center industry, and business and writing.
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD You say and believe that your call center is good, but can you prove it? What you need is a credential. A credential is the verifiable recognition from an independent third party that you have earned and met a standard level of performance. Credentials fall under three, sometimes overlapping, classifications: […]
A Path to Self-Improvement By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. Benchmarking is the comparison of your call center with statistical results from the norm of industry peers. These numeric measurements are called metrics. Metrics can be in the form of financial figures, operational quality and efficiency, human resource efficacy, or whatever is deemed the most valuable […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD It was a lazy summer afternoon, a Friday. Things were a bit slow at the office and upper management had all left to get an early jump on their weekend. I, being a front-line manager, did not have that luxury. Besides, I had work that I wanted to complete before […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Do you like spam? Does anyone? I’m not talking about the luncheon meat product SPAM, which is produced by Hormel Foods Corporation, but rather the inundation of unwanted messages that increasingly plagues us. Unless you happen to be one of those who delight in propagating spam messages, I am confident […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. This fall, the thoughts of school age children everywhere are focused on returning to school. Some approach the new school year with dread and trepidation, a few with excitement and high expectation, and others with inevitable acquiescence and acceptance. Regardless of their personal perspective, many will be faced with the […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. Telephone answering services are by definition a subset of the call center industry. However, while the greater call center industry has a history spanning more than 30 years, telephone answering service has an 80-year history. In the 1920s, and the decades that followed, enterprising entrepreneurs began opening localized telephone answering […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. The first annual Reach for the Stars Pediatric Telehealth Conference was held April 30 through May 1 in Bloomington, MN. The conference, organized by Children’s Physician Network of Minneapolis-St Paul, MN, focused on Achieving Clinical Excellence in Telephone Triage. With nearly 300 participants and a dozen vendors represented, attendance exceeded […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. AnswerStat magazine (AS): Joe, you own and operate Mediconnect, a telephone answering service for the healthcare industry. How did you get started and how long have you been in business? Joseph Sameh (JS): I was a business/clinical practice manager beginning in 1976. Growing practices was among my primary responsibilities. Each […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD In retail, the term shrinkage is euphemistically used to reference stock which “disappears” before it can be sold. In essence it is a product that the retailer bought, but can’t sell. To be direct, shrinkage is theft. While some of this occurs in the form of shoplifting, it also results […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD In the years between high school graduation and my first real job, I took on a variety of part-time work while being a full-time student. One job was at a machine shop, where my sole goal was to have all body parts intact when I left. Another job was laboring […]